Licenses

Each Cisco UCS fabric interconnect comes with several port licenses that are factory installed and shipped with the hardware. Fabric interconnects can be purchased fully licensed or partially licensed. Additional licenses can also be purchased after delivery.

At a minimum, each fabric interconnect ships with the following counted licenses pre-installed:

Cisco UCS 6248 fabric interconnect—pre-installed licenses for the first twelve unified ports enabled in Cisco UCS Manager. Expansion modules come with eight licenses that can be used on the expansion module or the base module.

Cisco UCS 6296 fabric interconnect—pre-installed licenses for the first eighteen unified ports enabled in Cisco UCS Manager. Expansion modules come with eight licenses that can be used on the expansion module or the base module.

Note

The eight default licenses that come with a 6200 series fabric interconnect expansion module can be used to enable ports on the base module, but will travel with the expansion module if it is removed. Upon removal of an expansion module, any default expansion module licenses being used by the base module are removed from the ports on the base module, resulting in unlicensed ports.

Port licenses are not bound to physical ports. When you disable a licensed port, that license is then retained for use with the next enabled port. If you want to use additional fixed ports, you must purchase and install licenses for those ports.

Important:

Licenses are not portable across product generations. Licenses purchased for 6100 series fabric interconnects cannot be used to enable ports on 6200 series fabric interconnects or vice-versa.

Grace Period

If you attempt to use a port that does not have an installed license, Cisco UCS initiates a 120 day grace period. The grace period is measured from the first use of the port without a license and is paused when a valid license file is installed. The amount of time used in the grace period is retained by the system.

Note

Each physical port has its own grace period. Initiating the grace period on a single port does not initiate the grace period for all ports.

If a licensed port is unconfigured, that license is transferred to a port functioning within a grace period. If multiple ports are acting within grace periods, the license is moved to the port whose grace period is closest to expiring.

High Availability Configurations

To avoid inconsistencies during failover, we recommend that both fabric interconnects in the cluster have the same number of ports licensed. If symmetry is not maintained and failover occurs, Cisco UCS enables the missing licenses and initiates the grace period for each port being used on the failover node.

Obtaining a License

This process may change after the release of this document. If one or more of these steps no longer applies, contact your Cisco representative for information on how to obtain a license file.

Before You Begin

Obtain the following:

Host ID or serial number for the fabric interconnect

Claim certificate or other proof of purchase document for the fabric interconnect or expansion module

Procedure

Step 1

Obtain the product authorization key (PAK) from the claim certificate or other proof of purchase document.

Step 2

Locate the website URL in the claim certificate or proof of purchase document.

Step 3

Access the website URL for the fabric interconnect and enter the serial number and the PAK.

Cisco sends you the license file by email. The license file is digitally signed to authorize use on only the requested fabric interconnect. The requested features are also enabled once Cisco UCS Manager accesses the license file.

What to Do Next

Install the license on the fabric interconnect.

Installing a License

Note

In a cluster
setup, we recommend that you download and install licenses to both fabric
interconnects in matching pairs. An individual license is only downloaded to
the fabric interconnect that is used to initiate the download.

Before You Begin

Obtain the required licenses from Cisco.

Procedure

Command or Action

Purpose

Step 1

UCS-A#
scope license

Enters license mode.

Step 2

UCS-A /license # download licensefrom-filesystem

Downloads the license from its source location. For the from-filesystem: argument, use one of the following syntaxes:

Viewing License Usage for a Fabric Interconnect

Displays the license usage table for all license files installed on the fabric interconnect.

This following are included:

Feat Name

The name of the feature to which the license applies.

Scope

The fabric associated with the license.

Default

The default number of licenses provided for this Cisco UCS domain.

Total Quant

The total number of licenses available. This value is the sum of the number of default licenses plus the number of purchased licenses.

Used Quant

The number of licenses currently being used by the system. If this value exceeds the total number of licenses available, then some ports will stop functioning after their associated grace period expires.

State

The operational state of the license.

Peer License Count Comparison

The number of licenses on the peer fabric interconnect compared to this fabric interconnect. This can be one of the following:

exceeds—the peer fabric interconnect has more licenses installed than this fabric interconnect

Uninstalling a License

Note

Permanent
licenses cannot be uninstalled if they are in use. You can only uninstall a
permanent license that is not in use. If you try to delete a permanent license
that is being used,
Cisco UCS Manager rejects
the request with an error message.

Before You Begin

Back up the
Cisco UCS Manager
configuration.

Procedure

Command or Action

Purpose

Step 1

UCS-A#
scope license

Enters license mode.

Step 2

UCS-A /license # clear filelicense-filename

Uninstalls the specified license.

Cisco UCS Manager
deactivates the license, removes the license from the list of licenses, and
deletes the license from the fabric interconnect. The port is moved into
unlicensed mode. In a cluster setup, you must uninstall the license from the
other fabric interconnect.